Courses
Artificial Intelligence in Games
Understand the differences between traditional AI and AI applied to game development, where other factors such as playability are more relevant that the oponent’s intelligence level. Be familiar with the practical problems when developing AI for video games, and with the several techniques applied in comercial video games. Know how to design and build an AI system for a video game independently of its genre (action, sport, strategy, narrative).
Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems
To acquire general notions about agents and multi-agent systems; knowing how to identify and classify agents and environments, according to different properties. Knowing how to develop complex systems and systems from different application areas, using an agent-oriented methodology. Knowing how to define a society of agents in order to solve a specific problem. Being able to design agents with reactive, deliberative and hybrid architectures. Being able to create societies of agents that communicate, in a practical way, using suitable languages and platforms.
Computer Graphics for Games
This course covers both theory and practice of game engine software development. It delves into the different engine subsystems including, but not limited to, rendering, character animation, and physics, and details the articulation required to support gameplay development. By the end of this course, students should understand how modern game engines work, and be able to design and develop their own game engines.
Game Design
This course grants the students the opportunity to develop their skills on experience design and prototyping for games. The learning process is sustained in the discussion of what is a game, what are its components and what is its relation to the players (having in mind their differences). It is expected that the student develop design documents and prototypes to support his/her work on the course.
Game Development Methodology
Present a vision of the different methodologies and technologies involved in the development of digital games discussing the main features and issues in each one. Grant students with conceptual tools and techniques to develop user interfaces for games with special emphasis on player controls. Develop the ability to reflect and test the player experience and gameplay. Discuss the role of conceptual modelling and user testing. Highlight the importance to take a user centred approach in the exploration of the player experience.
Multimedia Content Production
Know the different types of multimédia information and how to manipulate them to poduce multimedia content. To understand the technological constraints that affect Production. To understand critical factors affect the success of a production, namely in aspects such as capture, encoding, processing and visualization of the different media. To know the different kinds of available authoring tools. To create Multimedia contents; To identify the different contexts in which multimedia can be consumed, with emphasys on online and network issues (evaluate bandwidth, latency, synchronization, etc.) and mobile devices. Introduce some advanged multimedia usages such as procedural modelling, generative art augmented reality. Apply efficient methods of multimedia content retrieval.
Thesis
Skill-based Progression Model for Smash Time
Gone are the days the content of a game was completely created manually and the gameplay was pre-scripted before the game release. Nowadays an increasing number of games use procedurally generated content to provide engaging gaming experiences. Most of the endless single player games generate content based on the difficulty of the challenges combined with the duration of the current game session, which leads to a similar gameplay experience to every player. In this dissertation, we address the problem of keeping the players engaged in a game for longer periods of time. One way to increase the gameplay experience of a game is to increase the feeling of progression. To solve this problem we propose a progression model that creates content based on the player skill. We theorize that, by providing a progression that is adapted to the player based on the player skill, keeping the variety of the challenges will lead to more engaging gameplay experiences. We propose a progression model for the endless level of the mobile game Smash Time. We believe to have created a progression model that is robust and dynamic enough to be used in different games and that excludes the need of using preset difficulty settings. The results from playtests with users suggest that the developed progression model is able to increase the number and duration of the gameplay experiences and has the potential to increase player immersion, creating more engaging gameplay experiences that may, ultimately, increase the overall lifetime of the game itself.
LINA: A Serious Game To Help Children Improve Social Relations With Their Peers
Children that have problems in developing socialization skills before their teens can become socially isolated, leading to low self-esteem and social alienation, and possibly snowballing into more serious psychological problems further into adulthood. In this thesis we present a the implementation for a Serious Game, LINA, that uses Contact Theory to help pre-adolescent children improving the relations with their peers. In LINA, the players, children from 10 to 12 years old, will try to find out what happened to a missing colleague - Lina - and her story through the discovery of augmented reality clues and overcoming challenges cooperatively. This document specifies the game concept, methodology and implementation of a digital prototype for demonstration. Also evaluates said prototype regarding its usability, enjoyment and interest for the players. Conducted evaluation determined that the players find the gameplay and story fun and are keen on playing more of the game. Future work involves revising this first prototype with the feedback from the evaluation session, coming up with new challenges and exploring technical limitations of Augmented Reality in the game context.